Saturday Night Radio Drama - Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova -

First Metis Man of Odesa part 1

First Metis Man of Odesa part 2

Interview with Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova

A real-life love story that spans continents, a pandemic and an invasion

Matt, a Canadian Metis playwright, falls for Mariya, a Ukrainian actor, during a theatre workshop in Kyiv. They kindle a year-long romance through emails before meeting in Toronto, igniting a whirlwind love affair. But as they face the challenges of a long-distance relationship, doubts creep in for both. Just before the pandemic hits, they receive life-altering news, testing the strength of their bond and the viability of their future together.

Rod Serling always said he loved working at the end of the "golden age" or radio drama in the U.S. because it was so cheap to produce the owners of the radio station didn't care what he did so he could write pretty much what he liked.  Audio drama is, if anything, freer than that because it's even cheaper to produce and the audio equipment now is far easier to use and produces much better sound without having to have or be a really good technician or engineer.  So writers are freer to produce unusual stories and try new things.   A lot of it is pretty bad, but that's true of the most expensive medium with the most control,  the movies, TV shows, stage shows.   I'm going through the PlayMe collection of audio drama from the Canadian Broadcasting Company and may be posting more of them.   

Answer To An Unposted Comment

I DON'T care what they say about me at Duncan's, I left there a dozen years ago ashamed to realize I'd wasted way too much time there the previous eight or so years and those asses all wasted that next twelve years there.  I learned a long time ago to never mistake self-congratulation and conceit for intelligence.   Considering what a self-congratulatory circle jerk it is, for them to ridicule people anywhere as interbred is mildly amusing.   Nothing of any importance is ever said there and nothing is ever done by any of them. 

Some Footnotes

 NO ONE HAS requested that I post Simp's rote accusation of "antisemitism" against me so I can answer it for at least the fiftieth time.   Not even Simps or his sock drawer.  So I don't expect I'll be posting it and will remove it from the cue in comment moderation after a while.   I guess the People who read this blog are as tired of it as I am.

This post from six years ago is, I believe the first time I criticized the IHRA project of coming up with an "official" definition of antisemitism which is, for the most part, an attempt to shield Israel and its elected governments from legitimate criticism.   In looking over it again and in light of the recent history of Israeli elections and the governments that a majority of Israelis put in power,  I think the project is entirely discreditable and has to discredit those who were involved and, tragically, the group that generated it.   I will note that I noticed something in the definition that I haven't ever seen taken seriously by those who use it and support its adoption as a legal definition:

Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.

Let me highlight that last sentence.

However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.

That is certainly not a part of the IHRA definition that is much ever put into effect.  As I noted in one of my recent posts, I and many of those who have been scathing in our criticism of the Israeli government and, at least in my case, the majority of Israeli voters who repeatedly, over decades, vote those governments in HOLD THEM TO THE SAME STANDARD AS WE HOLD OTHER COUNTRIES, INCLUDING OUR OWN COUNTRIES.   I have said nothing about the Israeli government that I haven't said about other governments entirely unrelated to Israel, first and foremost, the United States.  I don't think I have made a criticism of Israel, the majority of Israeli voters and the Israeli government and military and Supreme Court that isn't matched dozens of times over with the same or its equivalent of those in my own country.  Not to mention many times more for some other countries from Britain to China to Australia and back to the USA.  I may have been less critical of Canada, though I've been plenty critical of Canada, too.  

It is one of the obvious problems of such a long, vague, convoluted "definition" as it is used is that such an internal correction will fall by the wayside.  And it's a pretty weak internal correction, I would say ass-covering.   And especially as, in the case of the IHRA definition, it mostly consists of ways of insisting that Israel and the Israeli government is not to be treated as all other nations should be treated but insists that to do that is antisemtic, it's classic doublespeak. 

And that's not the most serious way in which the entire enterprise was an exercise in doublespeak.  I will also note that first sentence which calls this a manifestation of antisemitism:

Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. 

This is supremely ironic because the very ideology of zionism AND OFFICIAL ISRAELI LAW CONCEIVES OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL AS A JEWISH COLLECTIVITY.   It is one of Rabbi Yakkov Shapiro's main points in rejecting zionism and the Israeli state that the Israeli state and Supreme Court has insisted on Israel as "a Jewish collectivity" not only for the citizens of the country BUT CLAIMS TO REPRESENT EVERY JEW IN THE WORLD, thus encouraging the antisemitic tropes of dual loyalty and collective Jewish responsibility for the actions of the government and military of Israel.   The very thing that the IHRA committee was trying to shield from criticism by labeling all such critics, Jews as well as gentiles as antisemitic IS ENGAGED IN EXACTLY WHAT THEY SAY IS A MANIFESTATION OF ANTISEMITISM.  

Every time I am forced to revisit this the more the blatant dishonesty of the use of the word becomes obvious.  And, remember, it's one thing that both the Biden administration and the Trump goons agree on, that they accept the IHRA definition AND TRUMP INTENDS TO WEAPONIZE IT in exactly the way that even Kenneth Stern, one of those who was in on its drafting, has admitted it would be used for that,  ‘The Zionist Organisation of America (ZOA) and other groups will hunt political speech with which they disagree and threaten to bring legal cases."

I don't know if Kenneth Stern has disassociated himself with the project, but if I'd been in his shoes and seen how it was used after 2019, when he said that,  I'd renounce being any part of it.  I think, given the origin and the way the term is used, a new, clean and clear word for hatred of Jews is needed a lot more than a corrupt and muddling redefinition of that word. Its use will increasingly come to mean nothing because it is used to mean anything on any different occasion. 

Send In The White Collar Clowns - Another Lightly Edited Comment Worked Into A Post

or:  They won't tell you that but I just did. 

THE QUEST TO pin down the win of Trump to any one thing or even a couple or three or four things might be a legacy of the "enlightenment's" origin in the culture of science, in its most unrealistic ideological form.  The relationship of the culture of  physics to the ideologically material-monistic quest of physicists, as manifested in today's quest for a theory of everything, is a very real thing.   

The belief against all evidence that sociology and psychology are sciences and, in large part what the motivation to consider something so clearly an attenuated manifestation of that, opinion polling, is a direct consequence of the idea that due to the monistic nature of reality, reality is vulnerable to the methods of physics and chemistry, so deeply embedded that I'd bet most of those who practice those have, at best, a vague notion that that is the foundation of their claim that what they are doing is science.

The fact is that all of those social, would-be sciences that mount such quests to come up with simple answers to extremely complex questions, are based on the practice of pretending you can even discern "data" to come up with a basis for answering those questions that way.  The fact is no one asking anyone what their motives are can come up with even one reliable datum, even someone who believes they are answering a survey question honestly and completely can't really know if their motives or ideas or opinions are so simply expressed.  And that's not to mention those who lie to pollsters BECAUSE THEY LIE TO THEMSELVES about why they vote the way they do.   I'll bet a large percentage of those who gave such answers to surveyors or pollsters wouldn't admit that that's why they voted the way they did.  

Academics and "journalists" don't admit the dodgy nature of what they base their "studies" and "analyses" on.  I'll admit the following from me is no more scientific than what they do.  They won't tell you that but I just did.

I think the strength of misogyny and racism in the culture as manifested every single day in the passive acceptance of violence and the casual acceptance of stereotypical and negative views of both Women and People of Color probably account for the first reason that both she and Hillary Clinton lost by the narrowest of margins.  Though neither of those reasons is a simple phenomenon.   Racists are often misogynists,  racists include those who have interiorized the generally racist culture (Clarence Thomas?)  and women have often interoirized misogyny (the examples of that include every Woman Trumpist you could name).  

Ignorance is another pervasive and obvious reason as can be seen in the numerous Trump voters who believed his line about how tariffs were going to be paid by foreign companies and corporations.  - something that I think Trump still believes, himself.   And that's only one instance of how the basic ignorance of a very large percentage of voters can win a presidential election for someone who the media endlessly echos in their lies as comprises the public career of Donald Trump from even before he rode down the chintzy golden escalator.  To attribute some folk wisdom as so many of these journalistic and pseudo-sociological explanations do is absurd.  Even the attributed wisdom that Trump won because of the price of eggs is, at bottom, an example of the ignorance of a large number of Americans because along with that artificial boost to the price of eggs came the undeniable  benefits to Americans in their earnings.   

Another big part of that  is the little mentioned attempt early in the Biden-Harris administration to boost the minimum wage as part of their wildly successful economic recovery program, including direct payments to Americans, WHICH WAS BLOCKED BY REPUBLICANS AND ONE SENATE ALLY, AS I RECALL WITH AN ORDER FROM TRUMP TO DO THAT.  Kirsten Sinema is a one-person reason that more Americans didn't directly experience what would have been one of the greatest boosts in personal wealth among the working poor and many in the lower middle class.   But she couldn't have done it WITHOUT UNANIMOUS REPUBLICAN HELP TO THE BENEFIT OF TRUMP.

Which brings us to a third most obvious reason that Trump won, he had the support of the mass media that makes up what most Americans seen to believe is what they know about the world and what they believe they experience.   Now, this is something that could, actually be studied accurately because you can see and analyze what the mass media did, potentially you could even come up with an accurate generalization of what the most observed online media did during the election period in the hundred or so days that comprised the campaign of Kamala Harris against Trump.   Though it would be a massive undertaking.  But if such a study of such an observable, you might say studyable phenomenon as that is impractically complex, it only proves my point made above that doing so for something you can't directly observe is impossible.   I would point out one big part of that observable, even quantifiable phenomenon is the amount of coverage to opinion  polls comprised the content of that media during those crucial days.

And there are certainly many other reasons that led the thin margin of voters AND THE NON-VOTERS who reimposed Trump on us, one of those things is what gave him his first regime,  the Electoral College.   The Israeli conduct in Gaza one which I have been dealing with in the past couple of weeks is a big one which has hardly been covered.  And it's clear that a lot of the result of that in those wanting to stop the genocide in Gaza were swayed by other factors, including ignorance of what Trump had long ago done and said he would do in giving the Israeli government a free hand WITH AMERICAN SUPPORT.   I would expect that a lot of the Jewish voters who voted for Trump did so on that basis, though that is hardly ever mentioned by anyone but Trump and he can't stop himself from lying and whining ANTISEMITICALLY on the topic. 

Update:  I noticed on coming back to the computer that after a largely sleepless night I neglected to note the original of this was posted at RMJ's.

Should I Post Simp's Rote Accusation Against Me To Answer It

 for at least the fiftieth time only to have him a. not answer any point I make, b. not say specifically what I said is "antisemitic" and, c. as he always does, change the goal posts instead?   It's pretty much what the rote accusation of antisemitism has degenerated into in increasingly frequent use of the word.  As I noted last night, Omer Bartov, said being silenced by the fear of being called that name was to commit a moral abomination.    

If anyone who is credible asks me to do it, I will post his comment, and by that I don't mean one of his sockpuppets.  If anyone thinks I should or shouldn't and gives me  legitimate reasons to do either I will post that comment if I'm convinced it isn't him hiding behind a false name.

As I said from the first time I addressed the dishonesty of the IHRA definition of "antisemitism" it was clearly intended to be used exactly the way that it has been used against me for about twelve years.  And I said that I had no intention of caving into that because, among other things, the word originally was used to label a very dangerous thing and allowing the word to be degraded for dishonest motives was a gift to the antisemites.  You can search my archives to trace that argument,  I think there are more important things to discuss, like the ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinians and its theft of land.   Which is exactly what I've slammed Putin for without anyone accusing me of being antiRussian, Brit imperialists without claiming I was antiBrit, and what I've said is the crime on which the United States is founded, something which I've slammed the idols of our secular religion, the goddamned founders and framers.  I don't think I've ever been more brutally critical of any group or political entity than I have those who wrote the Constitution and have governed my own country.   I sure as hell am not going to hold Israel and the frequently racist, frequently violently imperialist AND OFTEN EXPLICITLY ANTISEMITIC zionists to a more lenient standard than I am Jefferson, Madison, Washington, etc. and literally hundreds of other American leaders after them.  Israel is just another country, one whose actions are justifiably infamous.  We're not under any obligation to treat it as a special case. 

You Don't Have To Take My Word For It Here's What Independent Jewish Voices Canada Says About The IHRA "Definition" - Yeah, Answering More Hate

 

Notice the point made in the interview with Omer Bartov posted here last night that seven out of eleven of the parts of the definition are there to shield the Israeli government from criticism.   I hadn't heard this before I first criticized the IHRA definition a long time back, as soon as I read the text of it I could see what it was really about AND THAT IT WAS DANGEROUS to equate anti-zionism or even criticism of the crimes of the Israeli government with antisemitism BECAUSE IT TURNS ALL JEWS, THOSE WITHOUT ANY RESPONSIBILITY AT ALL AND EVEN OPPONENTS OF THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT INTO TARGETS. 

Zionism has been a catastrophe propped up by this kind of dishonesty from before the self-declaration of the state of Israel.   It is rapidly becoming more of a disaster as can be seen from the role it has played in everything from the lies told about the soccer hooligan started riot in Amsterdam toe part the Israeli genocide and annexation of Gaza played in reimposing Trump on us and the world.   Anthony Blinken adopting the IHRA "definition" was only one of the disasters conducted by the State Department under his leadership.  The entire disaster of the Israel-right-or-wrong policy of the Biden administration is the biggest and worst stain on what was, otherwise, the best administration since FDR's.   Things are bound to get worse now as the Trump regime uses Blinken's adoption of that definition to suppress dissent over American support for the Nazi-equivalent policies of the Israeli government.  And as resentment over that is suppressed, the pressure on it will grow ever worse and I'm very afraid that the innocent and even some of the not so innocent will be the victims of the very thing Blinken allegedly wanted to prevent by adopting it.   I think the people who created that definition and adopted and promoted it have permanently lost credibility and respectability by doing it.  And, as I said before,  I had high regard for one of the most public of them which I can't say I do, now. 

Welcome To The 1950s, Women And Those Of Us Who Care About Women If Not The 1850s

I WAS TALKING with one of my younger relatives who has put a hold on trying to become pregnant with a child she has long wanted because she will have a high-risk pregnancy like so many Women in America have or would have and she's worried about her ability to end a dangerous pregnancy after the Roberts Republican-fascists nationalized her body. 

I can't help but wonder how many Women are going to avoid pregnancy in hopes that Republican-fascists don't do what so many of them, including the Republican-fascists on the Supreme Court, clearly want to do, ban contraception.

It was decades ago, seeing the political action of right-wing Catholic bishops in returning to the pre-Roe period while opposing the promotion of educating Americans, older and young in using contraception effectively that they were, actually, one of the strongest forces behind America's extremely high abortion rate.

Anyone who favors both illegalizing the abortions that will happen no matter how illegal they make it WHILE CUTTING OF ACCESS TO CONTRACEPTION is clearly in favor of Women dying and having their health permanently damaged, not only when they feel compelled to end a pregnancy by any means BUT ALSO WOMEN WHO WANTED TO CARRY A PREGNANCY TO TERM WHO HAVE A MISCARRIAGE OR HAVE A LIFE THREATENING PREGNANCY.  Even now, the Roberts Court majority have summarily sentenced such Women to death AND THEY ARE DYING and about a month ago refused to intervene to save Women's lives.   Including the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, right-wing "Catholic" organizations even some middle-of-the-road Catholic organizations.   And what can be said of them can be said of many Protestant denominations, as well.  It's true of the Republican-fascist Party from top to bottom.   One of the two parties favors this for all Women and the "girl-dads" that were, late in the now over campaign, invented to assure us that the non-Women-killing party would win the election were a figment of their wishful thinking.   At least their numbers were clearly not a majority of "dads" overall. 

I have every expectation that the Roberts Republican-fascist Court will get to overturning the Griswold decision, now that they know that their party actually won AFTER THEY OVERTURNED ROE.  And that the governors and legislatures of Republican-fascist dominated states will go with that just as they have been killing Women in their states, now.  And I wouldn't expect those state Constitutional changes voted for by even some who opted for Trump will stand after the Republican-fascists put that nationwide abortion ban into effect.   Would you want to bet the life and safety of yourself, your daughter, your neice, your mother on the Roberts-Republican-fascist Court not upholding it and declaring it trumps state Constitutions?   If you do you are living in a fool's paradise, as so many of us are encouraged to by the TV pundit lawyers who assured us that the Courts would save us.

The media which has been burying these stories are complicit, too.  They are guilty of murder and they get away with it because our legal system and political system are what they always have been, corrupt and entirely unwilling to take such realities seriously.  

Something You Don't See Every Day - The Thought Criminal Recommends A Movie

I HAD HEARD of but had never seen the 1961 movie, The Victim, a breakthrough event in the history of LGBTQ+ liberation, probably the first mainstream (or is it "independent") movie to present us as sympathetic characters who shouldn't be illegalized and discriminated against.   I came across it online and it reminded me what life before legalization of same-sex life was like, even if it was in a British context.   

Who knows how bad it will get and if life could return to that or worse as fascism overturns liberal democracy, such as it became, remembering that for almost all of the history of liberal democracies LGBTQ+ People have been made illegal and even the most violent oppression against us and even murder against us was entirely OK with politics and the law.  

The opening part of the movie is especially compelling though it is an outstanding script, by Janet Green and John McCormick, for its time and the acting,  especially the outstanding main characters played by Dirk Bogarde and Sylvia Syms and Peter McEnery whose run from the police is what the movie forms around.  

You'll want to watch it on full screen. 

Israeli-American Holocaust and Genocide Professor At Brown Confirms That Israel Is Committing Genocide

 

America has to stop supporting Israel or it is complicit and supportive of genocide.  Americans who support Israel in the present circumstances are supporting genocide.   

The Israeli military isn't a "defense force" they are storm troopers.   Their goal is the same as the Nazis in their invasion of Poland, genocide for purposes of destroying the population of Gaza so they can steal it for Israel. 

The Quality Of An Apartheid Democracy

 

Ayman Odeh, a member of the Israeli Knesset, was removed from the podium after calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a serial killer of peace.”

A Nuanced Analysis Of One Of Those Demographic Groups That The Pollsters And Media Stereotype In The Broadest Strokes

HERE IS AN interesting and nuanced analysis of the "Catholic vote" which comes to the conclusion that the "Catholic vote" isn't really very Catholic in its character or stated motives in supporting the embodied moral wasteland that is Trump.  

In the aftermath of Donald Trump's decisive presidential win, two sobering trends about politics and religion are becoming clear: Religion doesn't seem to motivate Catholic voters, nor do views about abortion, an issue Catholic Church leaders have made a priority for decades.

Trump's improved numbers with Catholics may put to rest the narrative of an evenly divided Catholic electorate. Yet despite movement toward Catholic majority support of the GOP, the election results paint a picture of an American church more fractured than ever, according to analysts who spoke to the National Catholic Reporter.

Exit polling confirmed a persistent shift of white Catholics toward the Republican Party, with two surveys showing 61% of white Catholic voters voting for Trump. Overall, as many as 58% of Catholic voters opted for Trump in this election, compared to the 50% of Catholics who chose him in 2020 — an eight-point swing. A pre-election poll by NCR also found Catholic voters in swing states, especially white Catholics, favoring Trump.

These numbers extend the trend of Catholics almost always supporting the presidential winner.

But Catholics have not voted as a predictable bloc since the 1960s. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne famously characterized the pattern of Catholic swing voters with his assertion that, "There is no 'Catholic vote.' And yet, it matters."

Now Dionne sees an even "less distinctly Catholic vote than there used to be," he told NCR. "In a lot of ways, white Catholic voters are behaving like other white voters are."

This next passage matches what was and is my major suspicion about both the plurality NOT THE MAJORITY of those who voted, by a very small percentage, voted for Trump, and those who, as in 2016, didn't bother to vote but who had voted for Obama and Biden.   I THINK THE PREDOMINANT ISSUE IN THE LOSS OF THE SECOND WOMAN TO HAVE RUN AS THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION IS THAT A DECISIVE PLURALITY OF VOTERS WILL NOT RUN FOR A WOMAN WHO CAN WIN.   I would not add the Harris vote to the spoiler vote for Jill Stein in that regard because no one who voted for Stein believed she would win.  It was that stupidest of stupid things, a "protest vote" in which the actual candidate didn't matter.   You'd have to be as stupid as a  Green Party member to vote for Jill Stein believing it would have any other effect other than to elect a Republican-fascist. 

Trump's gains among men of all races and ethnicities also tracks with the growing gender gap in Christianity, which reverses a decades-long trend of women being more involved with faith and religion than men. Burge believes that men who are uncomfortable with progressive social issues might find it more acceptable to attribute their beliefs to religion than to racism, xenophobia or homophobia.

But note, their religion didn't come into play when a straight, rich, white man was exposed, in court cases AND BY HIS OWN WORDS as a sexual abuser., a rapist, a crook and all round scoundrel.   Such is the quality of such "religion" that ends up doing that. 

I have to wonder how much of that can be said of the white evangelicals who also and even more notoriously support the most blatantly and aggressively anti-Christian  and clearly culturally and creedally non-Christian president in our history.*   One who attacks, brutalizes, calls for violence and discrimination and oppression against the least among us, including widows, orphans and the stranger living among us.   One who encouraged hatred of our neighbors, especially if they aren't white and who has heaped false witness on so many it's impossible to come up with even a representative list. 

Pope Francis may have inadvertently given some Catholics permission to vote for Trump by equating the two candidates as both "against life" — Harris for her stance on abortion and Trump for his on immigration. The pope urged U.S. Catholics to use their consciences to determine the "lesser of two evils."
 

Yet neither issue was named as the primary issue of Catholic voters. Instead, like voters as a whole, Catholics put economic concerns at the top of their list.

The article continues on what the media presents as the quintessential "Catholic" issue:

Yet neither issue was named as the primary issue of Catholic voters. Instead, like voters as a whole, Catholics put economic concerns at the top of their list.
 

Abortion not galvanizing voters

Voters sent a contradictory message on the issue of abortion. In the 10 states where abortion was literally on the ballot in the form of state constitutional amendments, measures that protected or expanded abortion access won in seven states. It would also have prevailed in an eighth, Florida — where the amendment won support from 57% of voters, but Florida requires a 60% threshold, rather than a simple majority, to amend its constitution.

In the states where abortion expansion initiatives failed, Catholic dioceses and other organizations had poured millions of dollars into opposition groups. Yet in four of the seven states where voters expanded abortion access, majorities also voted for Trump.

"A lot of people went to the ballot box and voted for Trump and to increase abortion access," said Burge.

And at least some of these pro-choice Trump voters were Catholic. Polls consistently show, as did NCR's, that a majority of Catholics support legal abortion in all or most cases.

"Despite everything the bishops have tried to do to make abortion the Catholic issue, the public opinion polls show Catholics are pretty much the same as everybody else on abortion," Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese observed in a post-election event sponsored by Georgetown University.

I am ever more skeptical that a population that lives in a media saturated, post-literate, post rational, post-truth state can maintain a democracy and our country and, increasingly,  tottering democracies around the world seem to be experiencing the same thing.   I would add the poisonous extreme notion of libertarian liberty mixed in with that as a powerful help for those already with power, through wealth, through race, through gender, to lord it over everyone else.   Such a "democracy" may have elections, even elections that accurately measure the vote of those who are permitted and encouraged to vote and be an oppressive, subjugating oligarchy, as the antebellum South was and so many other states were, in reality.   That should certainly not be a surprise, just about every one of the most oppressive dictatorships and oligarchies in the modern world go through an exercise of voting and they never change their character.   As I've pointed out, that's what the United States was, by law, by court decision, before the Voting Rights Act was passed and implemented, only to have the Constitutional order destroy that one thing that, along with the 19th Amendment, made the country, for the first time, something approaching a real democracy.  

It certainly doesn't surprise me that Catholics don't vote and act on the basis of Catholic social teaching and the Gospels, following those costs those who follow them.   I am not surprised that as white Catholics become more affluent and mainstream that they fall for the same corruptions as have characterized American politics, law and society for most of our history.   If the bishops, cardinals, even Pope Francis had those foremost in mind they would be shocked at the morals of most Catholics, those making the most gaudy display of their Catholicism among the most immoral of their "faith."  

I have less and less faith in the official Catholic Church as I have more confidence in the dissidents, those who belong to Catholic radical and progressive groups, those who hold unofficial, vernacular masses and Eucharists, the Roman Catholic Women Priests movement.  I have a lot more faith in the missionary Church in the third world than I do the Church anywhere in the affluent world.   That is not the majority of the Catholic Church in America who I don't have any more hope or faith in than I do the Southern Baptists, the Mormons or those who go to variety-show, night-club "churches."  

Another thing is that the "Roevember" that some Democrats pinned their hopes on with all their hearts was largely an illusion, when it came to rationally voting for the candidate who would codify Women's ownership of their bodies and appoint Supreme Court "justices" who would not strip half the country of their bodily autonomy.  They cared more about the price of eggs, or some other vague ambiguity, over restoring Women's most basic right.   And it wasn't because that was not an issue that the Harris campaign side-tracked or deemphisized.  The "girl-dad vote" that imagined large numbers of men with daughters would vote for the safety and even lives of their daughters doesn't seem to have counted for much.   That shouldn't be a surprise,  men with daughters allowed the homicidal status-quo on birth control and abortion to stand for far more than a century, even after Women could vote but didn't comprise the majority of voters.

American's by a reliable plurality, are a nation of egoists and narcissists, something that comes with the post-Christianity that pervades American culture, INCLUDING INSIDE THE "FAITH COMMUNITY".    I read Jeremiah and, as I've said, it seems all too true of America in this century.  I think we are about to find out if we are going to suffer the kinds of consequences that Jeremiah predicted his People were about to experience and which did happen.   I'll be reading the Lamentations on Thanksgiving and the following days till Advent starts.  

I Wish A Lot Of Evangelicals Would Start Calling Themselves Something Else

WORDS CHANGE MEANING and in the age of mass media, that change is generally for the worse.   If you know the meaning of a word and hear it used to mean something else, it can drive you nuts before you give in, at least to the experience of hearing it used badly.  I can't make my mouth pronounce a word in a context I know it doesn't fit.  "Misnomer" comes to mind because I heard that clip of Kevin McCarthy* in one of his slap backs at Matt Gaetz.   That kind of thing is especially popular among the post-literate, college-credentialed who want to sound impressive and don't realize to anyone who knows words, they're just showing how ignorant they are.   I used to notice that, especially, in magazine writing out of New York City, that a word would become the scribbler's word of the season and it would start appearing, generally badly used,  from one magazine to another, from one scribbler to another.   It's what I started to call "scribbleage" back in the 1970s.  Now they do that on Twitter and in instant online typelege. 

The word "Christian" is certainly among the most abused of all words, which has, at times, led to me giving it up as a self-identifier because easily most of those who use it mean something entirely different from someone who tries to follow Jesus.  That's true of many self-identified Christians, almost certainly most of them, these days.  That's not a surprise, Jesus warned against something like that was coming in the Gospels.

An associated word that has been stretched and distorted out of all meaning is "evangelical" though a lot of that comes from  it never having been a term of clarity either when used by self-identified evangelicals, evangelicals so identified by denomination or by those who use it either neutrally or as is so necessary these days, as a term for what a conscientious person trying to follow Jesus would reject. The problem is that there are many who identify as evangelical or who belong to a church identified as evangelical who negate that meaning of the word.   Many "evangelicals" support the most radical part of the Gospel, the Epistles, the Law and the Prophets, which is, in terms of American life and politics, father left than the far left.   Many of such evangelicals are politically on the left, especially among but not exclusively evangelicals Of Color.   "White evangelical" doesn't help much as a means of identifying a real and coherent group because though a majority, clearly, have little to do with the Gospel and its requirements, there are a sizable number of white People who identify as evangelicals who are as radical as their fellow radical evangelicals.  

The term is probably even less helpful than coming up with a coherent, homogeneous identity for white Catholics, though a large percentage of them poll as non-Christian as white evangelicals and many of the most public ones, including many priests, bishops and Cardinals are as bad as the worst of their Protestant allies.  At least you can identify "white Catholics" as belonging to the same Church.

I think it would be a really good idea if Protestants who are "evangelical" and at the same kind really try to follow the radical egalitarian-economic justice of Jesus, Moses, et al would do the Protestant thing and divide themselves from what "evangelical" has come to mean, strongly, publicly and effectively, as so many Southern Baptists have done in the past fifty years.   

I don't think it's possible for us to avoid a big old-fashioned religious fight and I don't think Christianity is well served by a comity that is both false and dodges the real issues of so many "Christians" who reject Jesus, the Gospel, the Epistles, etc.  Young People who grew up outside of any church or who were brought up in an "evangelical" cult don't know much about the Gospel of Jesus or much of anything else, especially in those cults who specialize in turning Revelation into an action comic and a fascist tract.   Something which figures highly in the "Christian" zionist movement which has promoted Israeli fascism and fanaticism, even among Jews who should know better than to trust them. 

I have said recently that I don't think Catholicism is going to avoid that schism that Pope Francis has tried to avoid, pointing out that there is an unofficial one as "ex-Catholic" is polling as one of the biggest denominations in the country.    I think Protestantism can't avoid something similar and the cult of niceness at all costs is destroying Christianity for the present generation.  

*  I think when I go underground I'll ditch my surname if for no other reason than that he uses it.  

William Bolcom: Gaea Concerto No. 3 for Two Pianos Left Hand & Orchestra (1996)

 

The prominent American composer, pianist and teacher, William Bolcom (1938-) wrote this concerto for Leon Fleisher and Gary Graffman.  Also known as Concerto for Two Pianos Left Hand, Bolcom wrote the   piece in such a way that it can be performed in one of three ways, with either piano part alone with reduced orchestra, or with both piano parts and the two reduced orchestras combined into a full orchestra.

Here is the world premiere performance from April 1996 with pianists Leon Fleisher and Gary Graffman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Zinman.

William Bolcom's catalog is so vast that it's difficult to have heard even a small part of it.   I came across this today and liked it so much I wanted to share it.   NPR's constant repetition of stories about Leon Fleisher back when I could stomach listening to it sort of put me off of all things Fleisher but if I were him this is what I'd want to be remembered for.  It's a powerful and subtle piece. 

so are those who acquire their wealth corruptly - I've decided to keep the sermons on these texts shorter than they've been

 The most cunning heart—
    it’s beyond help.
        Who can figure it out?

I, the Lord, probe the heart
    and discern hidden motives,
        to give everyone what they deserve,
        the consequences of their deeds.


Like a partridge gathering a brood that is not its own,
    so are those who acquire their wealth corruptly.
        By midlife it will be gone;
        afterward they will look like fools.

Jeremiah 17:9-11 

I don't believe I've ever heard a right-wing Bible thumper who seemed to believe God meant what is said in this passage.  But, you know as well as I do, that they'd fall back on the civil law in  the United States that is dedicated to making the corrupt acquisition of wealth legal.   I'm sure that's what that corrupt whited sepulcher Mike Johnson would fall back on, 

I am finding that Jeremiah, when you make the necessary substitutions to apply it to American life today, is fresher than what you'll find in today's news.  If there's one thing you know Jeremiah was not, it was a self-serving ass-covering coward which is what most lawyers and most "journalists" seem to be. 

RAHM EMANUEL SHOULD NOT BECOME THE HEAD OF THE DNC.

Here's what I said four years ago when his name was being floated, no doubt by him and is posse, for a role in the Biden administration.  And I'll post the entire post, not just a link that won't get followed up.

Saturday, November 14, 2020
Hate Mail - I Will Never Apologize For Saying What I Did BECAUSE IT IS THE TRUTH

Barack Obama making Rahm Emanuel his Chief of Staff was probably his first and one of his biggest mistakes, if it wasn't a mistake it would force me to revise my opinion of Obama as a person and a politician much lower than it already is.    

You don't have to take my word for why Rahm Emanuel should never, ever be appointed to anything by a Democratic President, ever again, Mark Konkol gave a partial list.

. . .  Biden would be better off without Rahm's political baggage.

And Rahm's got a lot.

It's no secret Emanuel was co-architect of the "three strikes" crime bill that led to the mass incarceration of African Americans — which Biden has called a "mistake" he regrets backing as a U.S. senator. In 1996, Emanuel advised former President Bill Clinton to "claim and achieve record deportations of criminal aliens." He was the architect of the North American Free Trade Agreement that sent American jobs across borders, and so-called welfare reform that only made extreme poverty worse.

But, let's face it, that's old news on a long list of reasons there should be a ban on appointing Emanuel to any job that gives him a say in public policy.

It's the state in which Emanuel left Chicago that is the most troubling part of his legacy, and a harbinger for the damage he can do when entrusted with power. His administration treated Chicago as if it were two cities — one for the rich and powerful, another for the poor and forgotten.

Chicagoans remember how often Emanuel bragged of attracting an always increasing number of tourists from around the world, while turning a blind eye to the exodus of Black families fleeing neighborhoods neglected by City Hall.

As mayor, Emanuel closed the most public schools in American history and shut down half of the city's mental health centers, most of them in poor and minority neighborhoods.

Emanuel catered to the rich and famous. His administration squandered millions of dollars in federal funding pushing Elon Musk's high-speed train tunnel to O'Hare International Airport that died before the digging started. He funneled billions of taxpayer dollars skimmed from public schools and the park district to developers building the rich part of town.

And Emanuel would have given away a corner of Chicago's precious lakefront land — and millions more taxpayer money — for "Star Wars" creator George Lucas' private museum, if a righteous lawsuit didn't stop him.

During Emanuel's tenure, he hit homeowners with the biggest property tax increase in our city's history, raised fines and fees that hurt poor folks the most, and made the city's bad deals with money-grubbing parking meter and red-light camera companies worse.

And let's not overlook Emanuel's lacking judgment on who was best to lead Chicago's efforts on everything from improving schools and reforming the police department to managing public housing.

His hand-picked public schools chief, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, went to federal prison for pocketing.

The guy Emanuel promised would restore trust in the Chicago Police Department, former Superintendent Eddie Johnson, only made matters worse. He got fired for lying to Mayor Lightfoot about the night cops found him passed out behind the wheel after a boozy night of kissy-face with an officer — who wasn't his wife and who recently filed a lawsuit accusing him of years of sexual assault.

Emanuel's choice to lead the Chicago Housing Authority board, John Hooker, has since been implicated (but not charged) in a bribery scheme in which, according to a federal deferred-prosecution agreement, ComEd dolled out jobs and money to win legislative favors from Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

Emanuel's pick to run the Chicago Board of Education, Frank Clark — ComEd's chief executive when the feds say the bribery scheme began — was named in a federal subpoena served on Madigan. And the FBI is currently investigating a dirty $1 billion custodial contract approved when Clark was board of education boss.

If Biden is being honest about his plans to be an American president who brings people together, the post-Rahm state of Chicago should be all the proof the president-elect needs to know that Emanuel isn't the guy for any job.

Rahm left our city more starkly divided by class and race than he found it.

Besides, America deserves better leaders than a failed mayor whose top City Hall lawyer brokered a deal with a poor mother — $5 million to keep secret a video showing a Chicago cop fire every bullet in his gun, 16 shots, until her Black teenage son was dead — that saved his re-election bid.

Take it from a city that knows.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

For once I'll give the guy's credits at the end of his piece, I trust local reporters a lot more than I trust national ones, when they've earned that trust.  Rahm Emanuel is one of the few alleged Democrats who I suspect loves to shaft the poor and powerless, to destroy the environment, to do the bidding of the rich and powerful as much as any Republican scumbag.  He never was really a Democrat of any kind I'd want to be in the same party with.  I don't know why Obama named him or why other Democrats gave him positions of power within the House leadership, perhaps they figured they needed a tough-guy thug on their side.  But there are tough guys who are evil creeps and those who aren't, Rahm Emanuel is the evil sort.

One of the things Lawrence O'Donnell said in praising Biden's choice of Ron Klain for his Chief of Staff is that one thing he knew was that neither Joe Biden nor Ron Klain ever left a tough negotiating meeting in which things got heated with people hating them.  I hope that is a sign that Biden's long time in office has given him the political skills that Obama clearly didn't get from his brief time in politics before he became President, skills that make him realize he doesn't need a Rahm Emanuel and that having one would cost him more than it would ever gain him.  If Obama had passed a really great Affordable Care Act, based on him practicing more skilled politics, it would have been universally popular and the Supreme Court would never have dared try to sabotage it.  He probably would never have lost the Congress two years in if he had delivered the far, far more effective and worker friendly economic recovery bills that were proposed.  Rahm Emanuel's scumbaggery is largely to blame for the immediate failure of Obama to deliver what he had promised the Voters who voted for him, audacity.  What was audacious was Emanuel's influencing Obama to be a fraction of the president he had promised to be.

Response To Another Comment

Oh, fuck off, you obtuse piece of shit. As you well know, I am on record (and have been for years) as saying that Netanyahu and his cabal are evil and have to go. Get back to me when you can say something similar about Hamas or the Palestinian's political leadership going back six decades or more.

I mean that Arafat guy was a freaking riot!!!

A. I did say something similar about Hamas and Hezbollah last week,  I said I didn't choose them or like them any more than I liked the Israeli government.   I am opposed to all violent, terrorism wielding and anti-democratic groups and authorities and governments,  I've never made any secret of that.

B. If you read more you might realize that Arafat has been dead for 20 years, almost to the day.   I'd recommend you expand your reading past recipes in the Sunday NYT and that one and only book you ever read about Nazi rule, even Shirer knew he needed to write a more complete one, though The Rise and Fall is probably longer than you can navigate outside of the world of swords and sorcery or 18th century bodice rippers. 

C.  The United States doesn't support the "leadership" of Palestinians, sending them arms and money and support for their genocidal military campaigns and it isn't demanded that the government of my country support them.  That is unlike the demand that it support Israel, right or wrong, something which may very well have had an impact on the 2024 election to the detriment of all except the fascist government of Israel.   I think the population of Israel is as suckered as those who voted for Trump even as he'll damage them and risk their lives. 

D.  Whether Hamas or Hezbollah really constitutes the leadership of the majority of Palestinians is an untested question, though I wouldn't doubt that after, especially this most recent, slaughter by Israel in Gaza that Hamas could do what it wouldn't risk trying before, win an election.   I have heard some claims that support for Hamas increased in the West Bank in the past year, so, well done, Israel.  Such is the consequence of Israeli policy and military actions as it keeps doing the same thing and expecting a different result.   The thing is, Simels, I can't express any doubt about the Likud-fascist coalition being what a majority of Israelis want BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN KEPT IN POWER ALMOST CONTINUALLY FOR NEARLY HALF A CENTURY BY ISRAELI VOTERS.   Israel has had a morally damaging effect on both those who live there and those they have been trying to destroy for more than seventy years, now.  Palestinians in Israel may have a vote, but it's a vote about as meaningful in terms of governance as the vote of LGBTQ+ voters in Utah.  And the law of Israel will keep it that way.

Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result, Israel may be in such a spiral of insanity but I don't have to accept that the United States should go down the drain with it. 

E. If you think the tactic of labeling anyone who opposes zionism and the Israeli state as antisemtic is going to keep working,  that's rapidly losing its effect.   That IHRA committee that rigged an "official" definition of it to protect Israel from the truth might have been the last straw that broke that particular camel's back.   As I pointed out the other day, that's so obviously what the goal was that even one of those in on it admitted that was the result, right-wing zionists using it as a weapon in the United States and elsewhere to shut of criticism of the Israeli government and to protect it from the consequences its actions earn.   I knew one woman who had fallen for the "Israel right or wrong" propaganda until she actually went there and observed the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government and their military.   The reality of what Israel was in reality shocked her out of a life-long habit of thought and she didn't support Israel nearly as much. 

Younger people don't have such a well-instilled habit.   Unfortunately, and especially due to the dishonest and irresponsible practice of the past seventy years that insists that antizionism is antisemitism,  Jews who are entirely blameless for the actions of Israel and the American support of it get the blame when the fascists in Israel commit atrocities.   Timmerman was right, most of the antisemitism from after 1948 is a result of the state of Israel.  Until zionism, the Muslims had a far better track record of co-existence with Jews than Europe did, though nothing like the record of the United States and Canada.  I am afraid we now have a real danger of that changing as zionists team up with our indigenous fascists in support of Israel.   Though most of the young antizionists I've encountered make the distinction between zionists and Jews,  I wouldn't depend on that safety net as antizionism becomes more main-stream.   And antizionism will become more mainstream due to the nature of the Israeli government and Israeli society under apartheid. 

This isn't going to continue.  Israel is an untenable project, especially as those who are of good will leave it in increasing numbers leaving the fanatics such as Brooklyn and Chicago have contributed to the fascist "settler" movement which has committed repeated acts of terror, some of which even the Israeli government has had to step in to stop.  I would love to know the percentage of the Lubavitcher cult from the United States  comprise those "settlers" and how they voted in the U.S. election - I assume most of them retain dual-citizenship.   Among the rioting soccer hooligans in Amsterdam, there were a number of Trump signs held up.   I would wonder what such a figure would show if such a figure could be had, as opposed to the lies included in opinion polling.